Marine conservation biologist David Schiffman’s point that finning is only a side issue in the bigger problem of declining shark populations and his argument in favor of sustainable shark fisheries is summarized in this article in the May 2022 issue of Scientific American https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/everything-you-know-about-shark-conservation-is-wrong/. His book Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World’s Most Misunderstood Predators (Johns Hopkins Press, 2022) is on its way to my mailbox; I look forward to sharing it with Dimitra and incorporating it into our next post about “man-eating” creatures of the deep!
The linguistic study “A grammar of Kumzari: a mixed Perso-Arabian language of Oman” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Leiden, 2015) by Christina van der Wal Anonby includes a Kumzari lexicon, which among other things offers remarkable insight into the lexical dimensions of maritime culture.
Ibn Battuta and the medieval Arabic cosmographers have been constant companions to our blog. The references to Ibn Battuta’s descriptions of the shark eaters of the Arabian Sea come from H.A.R. Gibb, ed. and transl., The Travels of Ibn Battuta, 1304–1369 (London: Hakluyt Society) vol. 2.
Though he did not travel as far as Ibn Battuta, the erudite Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682) offers as fascinating a travelogue and as vivid a glimpse of the world and the mentalities of his day. His description of the Red Sea includes the delightful account of the coral reef and the sawfish quoted in the post. I thank Dr. Marinos Sariyannis for helping me translate from the Ottoman Turkish original the particular passage, which is omitted from the otherwise wonderful, published translation of the relevant volume of Evliya’s travel in Robert Dankoff, Nuran Tezcan and Michael Sheridan, Ottoman Explorations of the Nile: Evliya Çelebi’s Map of the Nile and the Nile Journeys in the Book of Travels (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018).
It is a great boon to have access to digitized versions of the marvelous illustrated manuscripts of Zakariyya al-Qazwini’s Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt wa-gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt (The Wonders of Creation and the Marvels of Existence). I have looked primarily at Arabic versions of the work.
The “London Qazwini” (London, British Library, Or. 14140) is one of the earliest and dated to 1300. Its depictions of fishes are marvelous but not as clearly striving for realia as other manuscript programs. Still, it has a remarkable scene of whale hunting that we hope to discuss in future posts. It has been digitized by the Qatar Digital Library project: https://www.qdl.qa/en/archive/81055/vdc_100023586788.0x000001
The “Munich Qazwini” (Munich, Bavarian State Library, BSB cod.arab. 464) is also early, dating to between the end of the 13th and middle of the 14th century, and by contrast presents more “realistic” representations of the creatures depicted. For the digitized manuscript, see here: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb00045957?page=,1
The Indian manuscript kept at Harvard, Harvard Art Museum, 1972.3, offers more stylized images that still seem to be based on earlier representations of the creatures. While images beget images, a careful consideration of the changes in representation over time may give us some clues about the original points of contact between purveyors of practical information about the marine world and intellectuals and artists who processed and transmitted that information in literary and visual media. You may browse the manuscript here: https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/216430